Mel Cook
My paintings feature humorous landscapes where representation
is fetishized. Using a maximalist approach in paintings that
slip between modes of representation, I address the process of
responding to the spatial illusions of painting, materiality, and
imagery. My work features warped spaces where figure and
ground merge. Drawn lines help demarcate the slippage between
what is and what might be, calling attention to the constructed
setlike spaces. Using clichés as props, the work points to a larger
cultural obsession with the idealization of the everyday and its
link to the “feminine.”
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